


It's Not A Problem If You Don't Look Up

by OrmondSacker



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Character Study, Emotional Hurt, Emotional Manipulation, Gen, Guilt, Pre-Rogue One, Rebellion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-05
Updated: 2017-01-05
Packaged: 2018-09-15 00:51:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9212330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OrmondSacker/pseuds/OrmondSacker
Summary: A look at Bodhi's childhood, youth and service to the Empire. And what ultimately drove him to rebel.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I kept thinking about the line “It’s not a problem if you don’t look up”. Not said by Jyn as it is in the movie, but rather by Bodhi possibly to Galen. It would be a line marked by anguish, guilt and deep despair.
> 
> I meant this as a meta but it ended up more as a fic.

Bodhi Rook grows up on Jedha a planet occupied by the Empire, even more under its boot heel than most the galaxy. Once a planet of worship and spirituality it’s now a war zone. Bodhi is too young to remember what once was but he still sense that something precious have been lost.

He _hates_ the Empire for it.

 

Living on Jedha he doesn’t have many choices concerning his future. In the end it comes down to one between serving the Empire or being a criminal.

Bodhi chooses crime. Nothing big, gambling - which he isn’t very good at - illegal racing - which he’s really, _really_ good at. He isn’t proud of it, but it helps put food on the table and give his family a few extra creds so he can live with himself. It definitely beats working for the Empire, he’ll never work for the Empire.

But that isn’t his choice. 

 

He’s the oldest son, so they forcibly conscript him when he’s sixteen. His record as a racer gets him sent to a flight academy.

He’s pretty good, not exceptional but good. Good enough he knows that they’ll try and make him a TIE pilot. He doesn’t want that. Maybe he can’t stop that he’s going to work for the Empire, but he’ll be damned if he’ll fight and kill for them.

He thinks about throwing some test, but it feels too much like cheating and the flight instructors always find that out. The punishments are not pretty and always public to work as a deterrent for future misbehavior.

He’s always had anxiety. He hates it, it’s always tripped him up at inconvenient times. Now maybe it can work for him.

Every time they have a flight test Bodhi makes sure to trigger himself just before. It leaves him feeling muddleheaded, tired and unfocused. If it’s a non-combat run he can usually scrape through, combat flights sees him among the first to die.

His grades go down, from good to average and it becomes 'clear' to his instructors that he’s not fighter pilot. When they tell him that he haven't made it as a potential TIE pilot, Bodhi just shrugs and looks at the floor so they wont see the glimmer of victory in his eyes.

They decide to make him a cargo pilot instead, he decides he can live with that. He can’t deny he loves flying and at least he’s not killing anyone.

He can live with this he tells himself. He hopes if he repeats it times enough, he’ll end up believing it.

 

He never does.

Over the years the Empire grinds him down, takes the defiance he once felt and just wears it out. He sees what they’re doing to Jedha, to the galaxy and even if he’s doing nothing to directly assist it he always feels that he’s still serving them too much. But he doesn’t know what to do even if he dared and he’s terrified for his family if he ever went against them

Not looking up becomes a habit, he knows what is there, what he’d see. And he knows that it would take away whatever faint, flickering hope he still has buried deep in his heart.

A spark that threatens to become a flame when he meets Galen.

 

He knows the man wants something of him when they first meet, there’s a desperation to him that Bodhi’s seen far too often in far too many people not to recognize it. What surprises him is _what_ Galen wants.

One day while they’re talking, they get on the topic of the Empire. Galen’s already expressed enough anti-Imperial sentiment to get him into trouble if anyone ever found out. Though Bodhi suspects that a high ranking scientist can get away with more than a lowly cargo pilot.

Galen asks him what he thinks of it all, of what they’re doing Jedha?

“It’s not a problem if you don’t look up?” Bodhi replies. But he knows it’s a lie and he knows Galen can tell, from the look on his face, the way he’s averting his eyes, how he pulls up his shoulders.

“I have a way that we can both strike back against them. Where you can set things right with yourself and your own heart,” Galen says, replying to words Bodhi has never dared say out loud to a living soul.

Bodhi knows Galen is using him for his own purposes. But so’s the Empire and at least with Galen he gets to follow his own heart, just this once. And it’s Jedha and Saw Gererra. He knows Saw’s reputation as absolutely ruthless, but also as someone who hates them Empire and will strike back against them with any means. And he knows the man’s reputation for protecting his own, if anyone can protect Bodhi’s family from Imperial retribution, it’s Saw Gererra.

When Bodhi leaves Eadu Station, Galen’s vital message in the pocket of his flight suit, he’s surprised that no one stops him. That no one seems to be able to tell what he’s about to do, he feels like it’s written all over his face. But he supposes that they’re all so used to Bodhi the anxious cargo pilot who never, ever looks up that they can’t see it.

 

“It’s not a problem if you don’t look up,” he had said. But Bodhi never had to look up to know what was there, he always knew what was there.

And it was always a problem.

**Author's Note:**

> You can yell at me on [tumblr](http://luminousfinn.tumblr.com) if you want to.


End file.
